This disclosure relates in general to reducing power consumption associated with portable devices and, more specifically, but not by way of limitation, to reducing power consumption of analog and/or mixed signal circuits associated with imaging systems.
The advent of portable electronic devices such as personal digital assistants (“PDAs”), wireless telephones, camera phones, digital cameras and camcorders, and the like, has brought about a need to limit power consumption by the portable devices so as-to increase battery life. Techniques, such as Dynamic Voltage Scaling (“DVS”), have been developed to reduce power consumption of digital circuits in portable electronic devices. However, DVS does not address power consumption by analog or mixed signal circuits. Therefore, because of the desirableness of reducing power consumption, there is a need in the art for methods and systems of reducing power consumption by analog and mixed signal circuits in portable electronic devices.
In 2004 almost 10 million camera equipped wireless phones were sold in the United States. And it is expected that as many as 28 million camera equipped wireless phones may be sold in 2005. Further, it is reported that worldwide sales of camera phones will exceed 100 million units in 2005. Reducing power consumption by the image sensor systems (cameras) in the camera phones is highly desirable to reduce power consumption and, as a result, increase battery life of camera phones to make them more attractive to consumers.
In the appended figures, similar components and/or features may have the same reference label.